The west has about a year – at the outside two – to show that it has a coherent strategy for the war in Afghanistan. Gordon Brown’s government has a still more pressing obligation to provide Britain’s armed forces with the resources necessary to play their part.

This is not a war that, in the conventional meaning of the word, can be “won”. A big part of the strategic shift needed in coming months is to redefine in the minds of western voters what might eventually be claimed as victory. Sadly, there is less ambiguity about what would constitute defeat.